This first issue of Manazir Journal originates in the exhibition dedicated to the Lebanese-American artist, poet and writer Etel Adnan held at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern in 2018 and the related symposium. It illustrates how artists, in the Arab world, connected abstraction and political activism, in a search that ties visual aspects to clearly expressed opinions and visions of and on this region. The title refers to Adnan's well-known epic poem "The Arab Apocalypse" which she wrote during the Lebanese civil war.